I just joined this forum to reply to this.
Firstly, the optometry industry does not support Bate's method because they can't really make money
from it.
Imagine this: myopic (near-sighted) guys walks in an optometrist shop, optometrist tells him:
"You can pay me a few hundred dollars for glasses which 90% of the time cements your blur (makes it
permanent). And once that happens, it's highly likely that your prescription gets worse over time as
a result of wearing glasses permanently, and you will keep having to come back to pay more money for
higher lenses."
Then the optometrist adds:
"You can also go and try the bates method. The bates method costs nothing. Except it requires some
effort and understanding on your part. Its got to do with reducing strain and retraining natural
eyesight habits that can often be lost in this modern world which evolved much faster than our eyes
could. Anyhow, there are thousands of people who have done this. Your choice..."
Of course the (sane) patients will go for the bate's method. Its the natural way anyway:
Glasses: Big, heavy, ugly, cause face strain
Fog up
Light reflections
Dust, Dirt, cleaning
Flatten image (looks smaller for myopes)
Dulls colour (all glass does this)
Need Maintenance
Contacts: Oxygen.
Infections (can lead to serious problems)
Protien buildup
Preakage
Eye damage
Need Maintenance
LASIK: Possible serious implications (eg blindness)
Some very common implications (halos, starbursts etc)
Irreversible.
New tech, unproven long term results.
Plus the bates method can get them back good, natural eyesight along with reduced face, head & neck
strain, which affects a lot of body strain.
Now how the f*** is the optometrist supposed to make money? How the hell is he supposed to keep an income? Has his whole time in optometry been a fraud? And has everything he learnt in his degree to everything he has practised in his 'profession' been a lie? ( Ans: It cant be! )
This fear is huge (imagine yourself in this position ), and that is why many optometrists simply deny any knowledge of it, or dismiss it as false, or in some cases, laugh at it.
Now, first go check out some pics of the eye's anatomy:
eye: http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/404.php
eye muscles: http://www.perret-optic.ch/
Conventional accommodation theory (founded by Hermann Helmholtz) says accommodation (focussing the eye for close distance viewing) is due to the lens of the eye flexing. This is the theory followed by the Optometry industry. Bates found that people that had their lens removed from their eyes could
still accommodate. Accordng to Helmholtz laws, this isnt possible. Secondly he discovered that the
part of the eye that did accomodation was actually a pair of exterior muscles called the obliques.
And that when they flexed, they changed the shape of the eye (made it longer by 'squashing' the eye)
which was best for close vision.
Short-sighted people's external obliques are in a state of chronic strain. ie they are always
flexing, so the eyeball is squashed and kept longer the WHOLE time, not just when needed for close
vision. The person doesnt notice (it's a subconscious process anyway), and the visual system has
forgotten how to relax for distant vision where it doesn't need to accommodate.
The genius of the bates method is in using methods for relaxing this strain and relearning good
vision habits. These methods aren't 'exercises', they are vision habits which must initially be
enforced/remembered consciously until they eventually sink into the subconscious visual system and
restore natural vision.
Again, it is not just a set of exercises, and this is where many people go wrong. Think of those programs that teach you to touch type with those typing exercises that slowly progress. Instead of focusing on just the scope of the exercise ("type: asd fse asfe sasasa def sae sde"), which is meaningless, you should actually be focussing on what techniques and habits the exercise is trying to teach and remembering and internalising the typing habits until it becomes natural and you dont even have to think about it. Once you finally learn touchtyping, every time you type from then on in normal situations, you are practising, but you dont think of it as an 'exercise' because you dont need to. The same applies with vision improvement with the bates method.
Think of this as restoring the original firmware (subconscious instructions) to your visual circuitry
(your visual system) after it has been flashed with buggy firmware at a time when the computer (you) was
unstable.
Bates method consists of a few main concepts:
Movement: natural movement in the eyes AND the body.
Centralisation: focussing on one small central area rather than diffusing on a large area
Relaxation: seeing in the relased state
Each consists of a few habits:
Removing glasses / contact lenses
Movement: shifting
swaying
swinging
oppositional movement
blinking
body posture
Centralisation: non-Staring
mental focus/active intent
non-diffusing
Relaxation: sunning
palming
breathing
This is only a brief overview, and doesnt cover everything.
These things are not obvious at first, why should they be? since they are meant to be subconscious!
Once you learn them, practise a bit, and form good habits, it will start internalising. In fact, if
you practise these concepts for the first time, you will start to notice a difference straight away.
Some people try this and it doesnt work for them, that is because they are doing it wrong because
they dont really understand what is going on. And that they are TRYING. trying hard creates more
strain. You kind of have to just allow yourself to see differently. TRYING REALLY HARD will just
create STRAIN, which is the opposite of what you want.
Notice how I didnt actually tell you what each of the methods are and how to do them? Its because
these concepts and methods seem very very simple and basic if given a brief description of what to
do. Im not saying they are hard, but they can be often misenterpreted.
What you really want, and what I really want for you, is to really understand what is going on,
and all the subtleties of each concept that nature already designed for our vision. If you want to do this right and do it well, instead of reading up on the net about it, and going to various websites with brief descriptions and try to learn it all in one day, is to go and buy yourself a book or two about the subject.
I personally recommend These two books:
Better Eyesight Without Glasses by William Bates (you can find free legal ebook versions on the net,
This one is a bit old and full of recounts and old theory instead of techniques, but at least you get to see where it all started)
Relearning to See by Thomas Quackenbush (you MUST get this. based on bates method, and is VERY usefull and successfull. The quality, ease, and depth of this book is outstanding).
Good luck, and spread the knowledge after you have realised this works. - HyperWireD
